It is an improbable blend of fresh milk and orange juice (won't it curdle?)

with skimmed milk, Brewer's yeast and molasses.

Let's give it the benefit of the doubt.

Crank's opened its first restaurant in 1961 at 22 Carnaby Street, London.

The menu was mainly salads,

but not the flaccid lettuce, cucumber and tomato combo

that 1950s Britain was accustomed to.

These were robust, vivid and fresh.

The crockery was handthrown stoneware from Ray Finch and his team at Winchcombe Pottery,

(and frequently nicked by customers.)

I acquired this one much later, unaware of his link with Cranks.

The tables were oak, the flooring heather brown quarry tiles,

the lampshades woven basket,

the seat covers handwoven.

Edward Bawden's drawings illustrated the first brochure.

This is a print of his Covent Garden woodcut.

Determined that their three young children should not suffer the same ills as their parents,

David Canter and his wife Kay, the founders of Cranks,

committed themselves to natural unrefined foods.

This was long before organic foods were widely available.

The last remaining Cranks restaurant is in Devon,

but as long as I have the book I can recreate the vibe for myself

and anyone else who is interested.

We had the watercress soup for lunch today but this long neglected book has so much more to offer and Crank's Cheese Baps (awarded an Evening Standard award for the best sandwich in London) have to be next on the list.

And why was it called Cranks?

It was not because they considered themselves, as the dictionary puts

it, 'faddists', but because

'we wanted a label to show that with strong vegetarian and wholefood priciples, we were very different from orthodox retail and catering establishments and we wanted a light-hearted, humorous approach.'

The slightly blurry photographs are an homage to the production values of the day. Truly.

Thursday, 26 March 2009

'In 1916 Laura Knight painted her large five foot by six foot canvas Spring,

now in Tate Britain It is a beautifully evocative picture of the Cornish countryside, with brown moorlands in the distance shadowed by clouds. The tops of the trees which line the meadows are about to burst into leaf, tinged with pink and orange. The rougher fields in the foreground are divided by banks of granite boulders topped with ivy, yellow gorse and the dazzling white blossom of blackthorn. The lambs in a field, a ploughman following his horse, swifts flying across the sky. In front of this scene, bathed in a reddish-gold light, stand a man and a woman. He is wearing the soft hat and deep pocketed jacket of a fly-fisherman and carrying a rod. She is slender, dark-haired and graceful in a white blouse and long red skirt, a striking black and red shawl over her shoulder.

Who are they, this Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?'

Ella and Charles Naper - Art and Life at Lamorna - John Branfield

Who indeed?

In this old print I have of the painting, the man is replaced by a small boy, striking a similar pose. Her coquettish stance and flirtatious sidelong glance are wasted on him!

It seems that the man was briefly painted out and then reinstated after it was returned damaged, from an exhibition in Pittsburgh.

John Branfield goes on to explain that they are Ella and Charles Naper. She was a jeweller and he was an architect and painter. They came to Cornwall to search for a way of life that freed them from the conventions of society.

They had made a decision to care only about what mattered to them,

the enjoyment of nature,

the nurturing of friendships and the creation of beautiful things:

a home and a garden, jewellery, ceramics and paintings.

In the artist's colony at Lamorna they found what they were looking for.

The last thing, Pa hung the bracket on the wall by the front window, and Ma stood the little china shepherdess on it...That was the same smiling shepherdess, with golden hair and blue eyes and pink cheeks her little china bodice laced with china-gold ribbons and her little china apron and her little china shoes... She was not broken. She was not nicked nor even scratched. She was the same little shepherdess, smiling the same smile.